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Gurafereda fire, 31 December 2016 Gurafereda, Dima

Out · last detection 28 Jan 2017, 23:17 UTC

The fire started on 31 December 2016 in Gurafereda, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,140 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in SNNPR since 2016 (of 186 with a page). Number 12 in Ethiopia in 2016, of 322.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gurafereda · 2016Dima · 2023Dima · 2021Dima · 2016

Burnt area
15,140ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
31 Dec 2016 – 28 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
31 Dec
2016
Heat detections
559
in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
136MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Dec28 Jan
28 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

31 Dec 2016 · 5 MW · 2 1 Jan 2017 · 10 MW · 6 2 Jan 2017 · 22 MW · 9 3 Jan 2017 · 17 MW · 10 4 Jan 2017 · 292 MW · 34 5 Jan 2017 · 552 MW · 52 6 Jan 2017 · 285 MW · 39 7 Jan 2017 · 181 MW · 31 8 Jan 2017 · 47 MW · 5 9 Jan 2017 · 1 MW · 2 10 Jan 2017 · 360 MW · 58 11 Jan 2017 · 274 MW · 53 12 Jan 2017 · 188 MW · 54 13 Jan 2017 · 48 MW · 20 14 Jan 2017 · 63 MW · 16 15 Jan 2017 · 99 MW · 19 16 Jan 2017 · 519 MW · 56 17 Jan 2017 · 98 MW · 13 18 Jan 2017 · 134 MW · 13 19 Jan 2017 · 67 MW · 7 20 Jan 2017 · 250 MW · 15 21 Jan 2017 · 81 MW · 9 22 Jan 2017 · 2 MW · 2 23 Jan 2017 · 34 MW · 3 24 Jan 2017 · 7 MW · 2 26 Jan 2017 · 33 MW · 7 27 Jan 2017 · 111 MW · 11 28 Jan 2017 · 28 MW · 11
31 Dec 4 Jan 5 Jan 8 Jan 12 Jan 16 Jan 20 Jan 24 Jan

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

37°high
32km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 30 Jan.

This area had burned before

29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,395 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.6% of the area of London (151 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Gurafereda where it started
    15,214 ha reached on 31 Dec
    6.1 %
  2. Dima
    31 ha reached on 20 Jan
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
31 Dec 33.3 °C 37 % 22 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 17
1 Jan 33.0 °C 34 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
2 Jan 34.2 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Jan 34.2 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
4 Jan 34.4 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
5 Jan 33.6 °C 27 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Jan 34.5 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
7 Jan 34.2 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Jan 34.9 °C 22 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
9 Jan 35.1 °C 23 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Jan 34.3 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
11 Jan 35.0 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Jan 34.4 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Jan 35.2 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Jan 35.6 °C 22 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Jan 36.0 °C 22 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Jan 36.7 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Jan 35.9 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Jan 35.4 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Jan 35.8 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Jan 34.9 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Jan 35.5 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Jan 36.7 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
23 Jan 36.6 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Jan 36.0 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
25 Jan 35.4 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Jan 35.0 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Jan 36.2 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Jan 35.2 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Jan after 34.7 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.8 mm High 27
30 Jan after 34.4 °C 37 % 20 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 24 Dec 2016
After · 4 Feb 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 559Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ethiopia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Gurafereda fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 December 2016 to 28 January 2017 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 January 2017 to 24 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,140 hectares (151.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gurafereda (15,214 ha, 6.1 %); Dima (31 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ethiopia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 January 2017 to 24 January 2017. 559 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.